


and in heaven below

by paperlesscrown



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 3.03, Accidental meta on Investigative!Bughead, Bughead Summer Sex Allusions, Bunker Sex, Canon Compliant, Communicative Bughead, Dirty Talk, Extended Scene, F/M, Fluff, NSFW, Riffing on canon, Safe!Betty, Slightly Soft Dom!Jug, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 16:26:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16601465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperlesscrown/pseuds/paperlesscrown
Summary: Before the bunker became their safe place, they were each other's.A story about fear, darkness, and the honest, naked intimacy that thrives in the spaces within.***WINNER: BEST CANON MISSING MOMENT, 4TH BUGHEAD FANFICTION AWARDS***





	and in heaven below

**Author's Note:**

> While primarily dealing with events in the bunker, this fic also deals with events and developments from 3.01 to 3.03.
> 
> My lack of knowledge around Adderall prompted me to leave that particular storyline off the fic, as I wasn't confident enough to tackle this issue with the nuance and grace it deserves. 
> 
> It is my hope that this story aligns authentically with canon otherwise. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy. xx

Betty hated the rain.

There were obvious reasons, of course. One being the dreary pall it cast over an already gloomy town, muted and exhausted following Archie Andrews’ sensational trial. Another being the fact that it signalled the end of a glorious summer and hence, the beginning of a tense and fraught school year.

But she hated it for smaller, more trivial reasons, too - like the fact that she couldn’t just walk to school every day like she normally did. Or the constant battle to keep her nicest clothes dry. Or the icky feeling of the rain seeping through her shoes and dampening her socks.

Or, more recently, the steady drip of water in the corner of the underground bunker where she and Jughead now found solace in each other.

“It’s useless, Betts,” he said, sighing as he futilely mopped up the puddle with a towel she’d brought from home. “There’s nothing we can do. Not until the rain stops.”

She surveyed him quietly from the bed, admiring the long bare line of his back, recently golden from months of being in the sun. Only moments earlier, her nails had scratched their scarlet territory into his skin as she arched right off the bed, pleasure rendering her blind to how deeply her fingers had dug in. At first, she worried that she’d hurt him, but the marks were now barely noticeable in the faint, greenish glow cast by the bunker’s faulty fluorescent bulbs.

“Don’t worry about it, then,” she murmured. “Come back to bed, Jug.”

He turned to look at her. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Just leave it.”

He slipped under the covers next to her, wrapping his arms around her bare form. The warm comfort of his body was familiar now - a much-needed repose from the damp coldness of the bunker. Their breaths slowed as they pressed into each other, listening to the dulled hum of the world above them, and the constant patter of the water streaming in from the ceiling.

 _Drip, drip, drip._ It was persistent, like a clock.

“That’s not bothering you, is it?” Jughead asked.

She could have said yes. She could have complained that everywhere they went - whether it was her room, or the Jones trailer, or the _Blue and Gold_ office - the outside seemed to seep into their little bubble. She could have bemoaned the fact that they lived in a town that forced them to build a makeshift love nest in a place that was essentially a _crime scene._

But all that was lost in his piercing blue stare, and in the way his hands now began to move again, slowly but surely, over the curves of her waist, the gentle slope of her hips. She smiled as her body unfolded willingly under his touch.

“No,” she said decidedly, as much to herself as to him. “It’s fine. This is… it’s perfect, Jug.”

...

Summer had been good to Betty and Jughead. While the internship with Mrs. Andrews and her growing conflict with her mother kept Betty busy and on edge, her relationship with Jughead had never been stronger. It was her haven - her safety in the midst of chaos.

Of course, the absence of gang flare-ups and her murderous serial killer of a father was a nice change in and of itself. But it also meant that she was actually able to worry about normal, everyday things, like what to wear on her first day as an intern, or how to sneak out of her room in the middle of the night without waking Polly and the twins.

But, Betty often thought, perhaps the glow of summer was only heightened by the fact that things had been so dire only months before, when Jughead was beaten to a bloodied pulp by Penny and her gang of Ghoulies. His injuries healed quickly, but the emotional trauma of having brushed up against mortality remained, and it imprinted itself on _her,_ too, making everything else seem trivial. When he woke up from his coma, it was only natural that every choice they made thereafter was a choice to live, a choice to _enjoy_ each other just because they _could._

And… more often than not, that choice involved each other’s bodies.

Their parents learned to turn a blind eye to it, and had to content themselves with being thankful for the fact that they were at least being safe. Their friends stopped asking where they were, the default answer amongst them now a simple, knowing smirk (except for Veronica, whose response was a wink and a discreet little fist pump). As for the Serpents, who’d been subjected to enough muffled moaning sounds drifting from Jughead’s room, they knew well enough to scamper away whenever their king opened the front door of the trailer in the middle of the night, leading his queen in by the hand.

Not that anyone blamed them, of course. “Hey, if I came back from the dead, I’d be banging my hot girlfriend all the time, too,” Reggie said over milkshakes at Pop’s one night. The couple in question were only a few booths away, but they barely heard him: Jughead was trailing her shoulder with soft kisses while Betty eyed him with barely-concealed yearning. Reggie may have been a little crude, but he was right: no-one could have begrudged them their love - not the Serpent King who’d been dragged half-dead from the woods, nor the Hitchcock blonde whose own father had been the very terror she’d sought to destroy.

And so, all summer, in between shifts at Mrs. Andrews’ office and researching everything she could at home, Betty found herself back in the arms of her boyfriend. What they missed out on in their time apart, they made up for in both intensity and frequency. In her room and in his, in cars, out in Fox Forest, and on the banks of the Sweetwater, she learned his body all over again, just as he learned hers. She knew just where and how to kiss him to drive him wild; he learned that she liked to be hoisted and fucked hard up against the wall.

But summer would end - Betty knew this. Soon, their wild, blazing nights would be muted to something softer and more mundane once the school year started. Archie’s trial was coming to a close, and she wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Hiram Lodge’s evil plans would be halted by a _Not Guilty_ verdict. There was work to be done, not to mention school to stay on top of and a brainwashed family to survive.

However, Betty couldn’t help it: with each moment in Jughead’s presence, she could feel herself falling into a deeper, wilder, and yet more grounded love than perhaps either of them had anticipated. And while common sense told her that the momentum would surely slow down - that at some point it wasn’t going to be as _electric_ as it was in this very moment - her heart, traitorously, whispered otherwise.

…

“This one, right here.” She kissed the small, moon-shaped mark on the back of his neck. “Tell me where this one’s from.”

“The one on my neck?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t remember?”

Betty tried, to no avail. Above them, the bunker’s lights buzzed and flickered. That used to annoy her, too, but they’d been in there so often now that it was practically white noise.

“Fifth grade,” he said. “Mantle thought it would be funny to punch me randomly on the swings - from _behind_ , by the way, like a fucking coward. He was wearing these brass knuckles that he’d found, and it tore my skin right open. It bled like hell.” Betty winced. “Anyway, you ran over from where you were and yelled at him right after that, and then I passed out.”

“Seriously?” She laughed, before glaring at him teasingly. “Well. That does not sound like me at _all_.”

“Oh, sure. Disrupting the playground status quo to protect the poor huddled masses of the school ecosystem?” He chuckled. “Not at all. _Surely_ not Betty Cooper.”

Betty giggled and planted her chin on his shoulder. “Alright, maybe it sounded a little bit like me.”

“Only a little,” he replied, turning to face her. “It’s a little poignant, though, don’t you think? You were always looking out for me. Even then.”

She was quiet for a little while as he stroked her face, taking that in, allowing past regrets to wash over her again. “Jug, I…”

_Maybe not._

“What is it?”

Her voice dropped to a half-whisper. “You know, I still… I still wish I’d looked out for you a little better that night. With Penny and the Ghoulies.”

Jughead sat straight up. “God, Betty, come on--”

“Because maybe if I was there, I could have helped you, talked to Penny or something--”

“What, and given her a clear shot at _you_ ? Or gotten Malachai within breathing distance of you? No _fucking_ way. I would have lost my damn mind.”

“I know, but--”

“But, nothing,” he said, with a tone of brusque finality. “I was safer _without_ you there, Betty. I would have had myself decimated _twice_ over if they hurt you. I would have fought everyone, and I would have fucking lost. And maybe I’d still be in that coma. Or worse.”

The lights buzzed again overhead, temporarily going out before flickering back on. In alternating dark and light, Betty watched Jughead’s jaw ripple, his breath quickening with the rage of the memory. She laid her palm flat against his chest, calming him, speaking to him soothingly.

“Hey. I’m sorry I brought it up. You’re right, and… it’s okay. I’m safe here,” she said. It was simple but effective - a phrase that became their mantra over the summer as they attempted to unlearn fear together. “I’m safe with _you_.”

He sighed and settled back down. “I know. I know that.” His hand cradled her head, fingers further entangling the mess he’d made of her blonde hair. “I just wish we could make it stay that way. God, especially now. Everything’s gone to madness again, Betts.”

“I know,” she replied. “But as long as we’re with each other, we’re going to be fine, and it will stay that way. I promise you that.”

…

August came to a close, and the already humid air thickened with the tension of uncertainty.

Archie’s trial divided the town between those who remembered him as Mary and Fred’s sweet, ruddy-cheeked boy and those who could not forget the reactive, vengeful leader of the Red Circle. For her part, Betty took the case personally: Archie was one of her best friends, and seeing Mary’s determination in working on the case night after night put an extra fire in her belly as she interned for the strong-willed attorney.

So when Archie took the plea bargain, she couldn’t help but be furious - for Mary, for Fred, for _Veronica,_ who wept openly outside the courthouse while Betty wrapped her arm protectively around her. While Archie’s deep-seated sense of justice often brought him uncomfortably close to harm, he usually escaped with his luck and his skin intact.

This, however - this was something else entirely. This was prison. This was his _life._

 _Oh, Archie,_ she thought as Veronica’s tears dampened her shoulder. _What are you going to do now?_

“Hey,” Jughead said, appearing right behind her. “Did you want me to go ahead? Looks like she needs you for now.” He glanced over at an inscrutable Hermione Lodge, standing by the car, inviting Betty’s gaze to follow. The subtext was clear: letting Veronica go home with her parents was probably not a good idea.

Veronica sniffed and looked up at both of them. “No, it’s fine. If my dad thinks he can break me down like this, he is dead wrong.” She gave Betty a fierce hug. “I’m heading home and giving him a piece of my mind. Thank you both, for everything. I’ll call you later, B.”

They watched her walk towards the car. Betty fretted for her; Jughead, sensing her anxiety, slipped his arm around her waist.

“Alright,” he said after a while, breaking the quiet. “What do we do now?”

There was no preamble to it - just a simple statement of resolve, and the word _we,_ the assurance that they were in this together. It triggered something in her - a sudden and fierce rush of tenderness for this boy she had known her whole life, and loved for nearly a year. She pulled him down, surprising him with a sudden kiss, before taking his hand and walking in the direction of a nearby park, where she talked and talked, outlining a detailed description of Mary’s legal strategy for Archie’s appeal.

 _This_ , she thought to herself, _this is how I’m going to cope with this mess_. _Action. Talk. Justice._

Still, though she felt optimistic about their chances, the moment had a strange quality to it. “It was weird, Jug,” she would say later on, during a lazy afternoon in the bunker. She was curled against his body, his arms wrapped protectively around her. “It just felt like the last moment of _something_. Like, thinking that all the lights had already gone out, but…”

“But there was one more left?” Jughead finished the sentence for her.

“Yeah,” she replied. “Then, you know, that one went out, too.”

“Yeah.” His breath caressed her cheek as he exhaled. “And then suddenly, before you know it, you’re plunged into pitch-black darkness.”

...

Within twenty-four hours of the trial ending, the last light went out in Riverdale.

Jughead found Dilton’s blue-mouthed corpse in the woods, with Ben barely alive next to him, surrounded by empty chalices and strange figurines. Meanwhile, Betty was being checked out of Riverdale Hospital only a few hours later, dazed, confused, and frightened by the things she had seen in her own backyard.

Or at least - as her mother and sister had tried to convince her - what she _thought_ she’d seen.

It made her feel strange and embarrassed - the thought that she may have hallucinated it all. Ominously, it triggered the same sense of alarm she felt in all those phone calls with the Black Hood ( _your dad,_ she would remind herself grimly). What was real? What wasn’t? How could one even tell?  

But then Jughead called in the middle of breakfast, telling her in excited, hurried tones to meet him at the _Blue and Gold_ office, and all was forgotten in the thrill of chasing down a new mystery.

He was justifiably livid when he found out about the seizure, which she’d kept from him. On the night of their foray into the forest, they rode his bike to Fox Footbridge, close to where they were to meet with Ethel. He broached the topic as soon as they stepped off. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “Betty, this was _exactly_ what--”

“What we promised not to do anymore, I _know,”_ she said. He softened immediately as he saw the pained expression on her face. “But this was… Jug, I didn’t even know how to - how to _define_ what I saw. Or, what I _thought_ I saw. God, this sounds so… I sound really stupid, don’t I?” She fought back tears.

“Hey, hey,” he said soothingly. “It’s okay.”

“I didn’t _want_ it to be real,” she continued. “I didn’t want to have something else haunting me, tormenting me, not after everything with my dad. It’s just _too much,_ Jug. I don’t know if I could handle any more. And I’m sorry I wasn’t truthful with you straight away, but…”

She breathed in. Jughead took her trembling hands in his.

“I just… I’m still working on it. Being transparent with you, I mean. Sometimes it takes me a while, because I guess I just... _default_ to keeping my guard up when I feel vulnerable or scared or under attack. Which was exactly how I felt that night at the hospital, and the next morning.” She paused, inhaling sharply before letting out a rush of breath. “But I know that I don’t need to do that with you.”

“You _don’t_ ,” he said, fiercely and earnestly. “Honestly, I... I’ll always take you as you are, Betty. You know that. If you’re feeling vulnerable or fearful or angry or anxious - I’ll take every bit of that, even if it’s messy. This town’s fucked up as it is and... you’re the most real, most important thing to me here.”

Betty held her breath as he took her hand and held it against his chest.

“I know there are times where it’ll be hard to let me in,” he continued. “But… I want you to know that that’s door’s open, always, for you.”

He pulled her in for an embrace, and she melted into his body. “I’m so sorry if I scared you,” she mumbled into the collar of his jacket.

He sighed, his lips on her hair. “Listen. I don’t scare easily, Betts. But to find out from _your mom_ that you had a seizure, and to think that I had _no_ idea you were in the hospital... it just freaked me out, okay?”

“I know. I know.” Betty held his face. “I’m sorry.”

Jughead nodded and gave her a small smile, and just like that, something in her exhaled. He gave her a final squeeze before switching on his flashlight and holding it right up under his face. Betty laughed, thankful for the sudden levity, this gift he had for making her laugh even in the strangest of circumstances. “So… shall we do this?” he asked.

Betty looked at the darkened trail ahead of them. The wind whistled ominously in the trees, but somehow, she felt her body aligning into readiness, braced for the night ahead.

“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

…

They had no idea that they would meet the Gargoyle King that night.

Betty could feel her pulse jumping in her neck as she watched the monstrous mass of bloodied twigs rise before her, afraid that she was hallucinating again. She clutched at Jughead, wondering if he was seeing the same thing, and when he told her that yes, he did, she uttered the only word that she could in that moment.

_Run._

They sped back through the trees, their panting breaths matching the other’s as they ran for their lives. Jughead jumped on his bike, kicking it to life before Betty followed suit and they sped away.

Moments later, they stumbled through the diner door, jittery and panicked, startling a few of Pop’s late-night customers. Jughead held Betty’s hand reassuringly as he pulled her into a booth and ordered for the two of them - milkshakes, coffees, a burger for himself, and eggs and toast for Betty (she had a penchant for breakfast at midnight, which, of course, he knew all too well).

Oddly enough, as they both wolfed down their food and went over the details of their strange encounter, Betty came to the slow realisation that she hadn’t necessarily been afraid of the grotesque apparition they’d seen in the woods. After all, she’d faced down her own father as he snarled at her behind prison glass - she was _immune_ to monsters. She didn’t actually fear whether that thing was real or not.

She’d been terrified that Jughead beside her _wasn’t._

It took her a few cups of coffee to convince herself that she wasn’t caught up in another nightmare mirage - that they had actually seen that _thing_ in the forest, and, more importantly, that Jughead was sitting across from her, very much real as he rummaged through a pile of evidence. She touched his hand every now and then, half out of relief that they made it out alive, and half out of a need to reassure herself of his presence.

Once they were done eating, Jughead slid the drawing of the Gargoyle King across the table, and they examined it for a moment, discussing what their next clue might be. “Is there anything on Dilton’s map?” she asked, hopeful that it might reveal something.

Jughead shook his head incredulously. “You mean what we should’ve checked _in the first place_?” Betty smiled a little at that. He always liked leading with her hunches.

He opened the map. “Yeah, right here. This is where I found Ben and Dilton, and this is the footbridge where Ethel wanted us to meet. But this…” His voice trailed off as she looked over at the map. “What does that look like to you?”

Betty racked her brain desperately. “I was researching runic symbols earlier. That one didn’t show up.”

“What if it’s not a symbol? What if that’s the drawing for the hatch--”

“--that leads to the underground bunker,” she finished.

“If this map is halfway accurate, I’d say that’s right around the deadfall in Fox Forest.” Jughead crossed his arms and sank back in the booth. “We can find this, Betty.”

She nodded in agreement. “A _bunker_ ,” she said in quiet disbelief. “You and I are going to look for an _underground_ _bunker._ ”

“Why? Is that weird?”

Betty laughed and shrugged. “I mean, we’ve snooped around a dead classmate’s room, bribed a coroner, and went all bad cop on Ethel Muggs - all in the space of a year. I’m pretty sure we’ve exceeded our quota for weird dates a long time ago.”

“Ah, so Jason’s funeral _was_ a date,” Jughead teased.

Betty rolled her eyes and threw a leftover fry at him. “Don’t push your luck.”

“I’m gonna take that as a yes.”

...

In the end, the bunker was remarkably easy to find.

To the untrained eye, the odd, grassy hump rising off the ground was nothing more than a peculiar landscape feature, but to Betty and Jughead’s investigative gaze, the whole thing was practically laid out for them.

After an initial scare by one of Dilton’s loyal followers, the bunker became more and more familiar to them – a second base for their investigations outside of the _Blue and Gold_ office. It was all too convenient: the bunker was like an archaeological site with everything preserved _in situ,_ as it was when Dilton last left it. They circled around the room, taking photographs of every inch of space and writing down notes on anything they found interesting. Betty dug into the town’s historical archives and found out that the bunker had been built during the Cold War. It had been forgotten and abandoned by its original owner, and Dilton, of course, had found it – a survivalist’s dream.

But it wasn’t his anymore, and technically, it belonged to no-one... except now it felt like it was _theirs_ – a place where they could do the kind of work that had first brought them together. Soon enough, it became a habitual after-school retreat. At first, they made an attempt to find more clues, canvass the place a little bit more, pretend that they were doing work. But at some point, Jughead eventually dropped all pretense, taking his laptop and books out of his bag and settling himself at the table once they were done, as if he’d been living in the place for years.

“It’s quieter in here,” he explained to Betty when she gave him a questioning look. “I can’t keep up with homework with half the Serpents marching in and out of the trailer, asking me for stuff.”

She smiled. “Wow, you’re still doing homework? At a time like this, Jug?”

He shrugged. “If all this ever dies down, it’d still be nice to have decent grades and a shot at college.”

 _College._ With a start, Betty realised she hadn’t even _thought_ about college since Jason Blossom was murdered. Once, it fueled everything she ever did in school, and now… well, too much had happened in their town. There’d been little to provoke her into thinking about what lay beyond the borders of Riverdale.

“Hey,” she piped up after a long, mutual silence bent over their respective books. “We haven’t _really_ talked about college, have we?”

Jughead smirked. “It wasn’t a priority, to say the least.”

“Well, no,” she conceded. “I suppose it hasn’t been, given, well… everything. How _do_ you feel about it?”

He sighed, closing his laptop before drawing her chair closer. Surprisingly, it all poured out of him easily – how much he wanted to make it, how much he doubted himself, how anxiously he fretted when he thought of how _expensive_ it was, how it scared him to think of how his old man would cope being alone at home, how much he wanted to get away from their town, but how much he also longed to be with _her._

Betty took it all in, half-wondering at what prompted Jughead’s sudden, naked honesty but also recognising that the bunker – with its low lights, its silent, echoing chamber, its oddly homelike atmosphere - had a quality to it that made it receptive to secrets and whispered conversations. She felt intimate with Jughead in a way that went beyond the raw physicality of their summer trysts, and perhaps that was also because they were right back _here_ , in the rhythm of what made them click _–_ investigating crime, seeking answers, digging for the truth, trying to make sense of their world.

At some point, Betty realized that Jughead’s stream of conversation stopped. She looked up at him, and he was staring at her with an expression she couldn’t read. “Hey. What’s up?” she asked.

“I just thought…” He shook his head, interrupting his train of thought. “ _Fuck_ , Betty, why the hell did I bring you here?”

She stared at him. “Wait, what?”

He stood up, gathering his books and his laptop and packing them furiously into his bag. “You know what I just realised? You had a seizure _days_ ago, you’ve been dealing with shit from Polly and your mom, you’ve been under stress… and I’ve dragged you out _here_ , in the middle of nowhere in some _godforsaken_ underground bunker— “

“Jug—”

He picked up her bag. “I’m gonna get you home.”

“What?!” She stood up. “What do you mean you’re _getting me home_?”

He whirled to face her. “I _mean,_ I’m doing a real shitty job of being your boyfriend right now, talking to you about college in the middle of some ghastly nightmare like it’s _normal_ , and it needs to stop, so I’m getting you out of here.”

“Hey, Jug, _WAIT.”_ She reached up to cup his face. “Stop. Look at me.”

Jughead met her gaze, and it hurt her to see small remnants of the boy who’d broken up with her in the parking lot of the Whyte Wyrm – the one who was so desperate to protect her that he’d rather hurt himself than see any harm befall her.

But she saw, too, something that overcame that; a boy who’d seen death a little more closely than he would have liked, and was wiser for it, knowing not to mess with fate.

Both, she saw, loved her beyond anything she could have imagined. And it took her breath away to see it.

“Jug, listen,” she said. “I’m here because… I want to be with you.” She sighed. “I’m safe _here._ Remember? That’s what we tell each other all the time.”

He scoffed and tried to look away, but her hand was firm on his cheek. “No, seriously. Remember what I said in the forest, right before we saw the Gargoyle King? I meant it. Every damn word. _This,_ right here, is the least stressful, most normal, most _valid_ thing I can think of doing.”

He sighed. “It’s the same for me, too,” he replied softly, and a little reluctantly. “But… god, Betts, how is that okay? Why is _this_ our normal?”

“It’s _not_ our normal. Remember the summer?” At that, she glimpsed a crack of levity in his moody exterior. Of course, Jughead couldn’t _help_ but smile, even slightly – the memories from their summer were electrifying. “But if you’re asking why we fall into this so often, into investigating and chasing cases together… well, it’s because this is where I’m at my best and most honest, Jug. With you. When I’m chasing truth with _you._ ”

His stance loosened a bit, and he encircled his arms around her waist. “Betty, I… I honestly appreciate that. But come on, look at where we are.”

She did. Drawings of the Gargoyle King adorned the wall. The table was littered with G&G paraphernalia. The lights buzzed in and out of being. Fear and paranoia practically adorned the walls.

Then she looked back at him - her clarity in the midst of darkness. And she made up her mind.

“It’s a living hell,” he continued. “And you—”

He was silenced swiftly with a kiss as Betty pulled him down, needing him to understand, but also needing _him._ He seemed surprised and a little taken aback, but soon he was returning her kiss - slowly at first, then with a firmness and force that equalled her own.

They stayed like that for a while, Betty on tiptoe, Jughead holding her up before his hands reached in to explore the warm, bare skin underneath her shirt. Slowly, he lifted the hem of her cotton top, slipping underneath, and she sighed happily into his mouth as his hands found their home. It seemed to steady him - skin-on-skin, his long, dexterous fingers on the smooth flesh of her waist - and she felt him unwinding in the heat of their kiss, releasing the anxiety he had felt earlier.

She drew back, smiling at him, thinking to leave it at that. But he wore an expression that she knew all too well - his jaw set like granite, lips parted, eyes darkened with need but searching hers, asking a question.

_Oh._

Did they dare? _Here_ , of all places?

Practically, it made sense. They were miles away from Riverdale; there were no Serpents yelling outside the window, no mother keeping tabs, no pesky students knocking on the door submitting articles.

But Betty thought, too, of what she had said earlier.

Of who she was when she was with him.

Of the fact that she felt safest and truest with him, even in the places where fear had meant to rule.

She locked into his gaze. _Yes, here._ A nod almost imperceptible, and immediately, he took the beanie off his head, flinging it carelessly to the ground. With two long strides, he eliminated all space between them and seized her mouth with his own - a more passionate epilogue to their earlier encounter.

“I thought you said this was a living hell,” she said, smirking, in between kisses.

But he was in no mood for jokes. “I did,” he growled into her cheek. “So let’s make heaven here below, Betty.”

…

The table scraped against the floor and hit the wall with a thud as Jughead backed Betty up against it. He leaned in to kiss her, passion pushing him deeper as lips and tongues met. Instinctively, her leg hooked around his, bunching up her denim skirt around her waist. Fumbling, she reached up for the buttons, desperate to bare her legs and have them wrapped tightly around his hips.

Jughead stepped back to help her, pupils blown out to darkness as his fingers deftly undid her buttons. She was trembling from need, feeling the blood course through her veins. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, her skirt dropped to the ground.

“Shirt,” she whispered hoarsely, not able to say much more, and he pulled it over her head. She was down to her bra and panties now - black lace, Jughead’s favourite. She’d put them on that morning without even thinking that _this_ would be happening. Apparently, she’d dressed for the occasion.

Jughead didn’t even bother unfastening her bra, instead pulling it roughly down over her breasts, which spilled forth with a jiggle before he palmed them possessively. Betty threw her head back in pleasure as he shamelessly groped her, her fingers tangling themselves in his hair.

 _More,_ she begged in her mind. _Harder._

When Jughead’s mouth closed around her left breast, Betty instinctively bit her lip down before remembering that they were in the middle of nowhere, and that her moans could be freed into the empty space of the bunker. Over the summer, they’d become experts at the quiet fuck - his fingers usually in her mouth, silencing her when she came. It was a rare occasion to be this open, this _vocal._ Slowly, as his mouth ministered to her flesh, she found her voice - ragged, choking, moaning, calling out his name.

Encouraged by her response, his tongue teased her peaks relentlessly, teeth grazing nipple just the way she liked it. Her cries were momentarily caught in her throat as her breath hitched and she gasped for air, dizzy in the rapture. She looked down, and he had the _gall_ to grin up at her as he nestled his chin between her breasts. “Enjoying this, huh?” he asked.

She cupped his face in her hands. “I would, but I’m wondering why you’re not naked yet.”

He laughed. “Soon, my love.”

“Okay.”

“But... there’s something I wanted to do first - something we haven’t tried before.”

That made Betty wary. What _hadn’t_ they tried yet? “What?”

He cleared his throat. “Go down on you.”

An involuntary shiver ran through her, but she had to correct him. “You’ve done that _many_ times, Jug.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, before tracing the wet, glistening line between her folds. “But not laid out on a table before me like this.”

_Oh, fuck._

If she was trembling earlier, she was practically shaking now as he lifted her onto the table, his eyes never leaving hers. Almost reverently, he removed her panties, sliding them off her legs and discarding them to the side.

She technically still had her bra on, but Betty felt more naked now than she ever had before in her life, with her legs spread out and open before him. The lights buzzed overhead, flickering on and off before blacking out completely. Her senses were heightened in the new darkness, and the anticipation set every cell in her body on edge.

“Jug?” she whispered to the dark.

“I’m here,” he said, his hands sliding up before settling onto her tits, cupping and caressing them. Before long, she felt his crown of curls settle against her leg, and soft, chaste kisses trailing an invisible line leading up to her core.

“Is this okay?” he murmured against her skin.

“M-more than okay,” she managed to whisper.

He stayed there for a while, the simmering devotion of his lips leaving tremors in their wake. In the dark of the bunker, devoid of her sight, Betty felt each kiss more intensely. By the time they had reached the inside of her thigh, her pussy was aching for his mouth, and on instinct, out of pride, she tried to stop herself from begging.

But here, there was to be none of that, no sense of false dignity - only the raw, primal need at her core, her honest and naked desire.

So she gave in. She begged.

“Jug, please,” she moaned into the empty darkness.

But apparently, he was in the mood for pushing her buttons. “Please... what?” “

She could have slapped him (which she had done during sex, only once, after a long discussion and with his enthusiastic consent. The brutal pleasure that ensued meant that they were both sore for days after). Even without seeing him, she just _knew_ he was grinning, the smug fuck. But she was past the point of caring. All that mattered right now was what she wanted. And _goddamn it_ , she was going to get it from him.

“Your lips. Your mouth. Your tongue.” She felt a harsh puff of breath against her flesh as Jughead was galvanised by her words. “All of it. All of you - on me, _inside me_ , driving me to the brink. Juggie. Please.”

That set him off, and his chest rumbled with a deep, guttural groan before he pulled her across the table and closer to him. He hoisted her legs over his shoulders before bending his head down to her sweet cunt, plunging his tongue inside her.

Betty would have arched right off the table if he hadn’t held her in place. She was grateful for the freeing darkness, for the fact that she couldn’t see her body twisting and contorting, every muscle tense and on edge. Because Jughead was outright relentless - refusing to take his time, not merely wanting her to come, but to fall gloriously apart.

Her hips thrust up out of their own volition, and soon she felt a storm building up in her. Jughead lapped at her arousal, and as Betty’s legs tightened and tensed, he built a steady, incessant rhythm. Her fingers clung to the edges of the table for ballast.

“Jug, _oh, ohhh,_ I’m--”

But she was interrupted with a buzz, the lights suddenly switching back on before dimming in and out of brightness. In the throbbing, flickering light, she looked down and saw Jughead, his eyes closed, his mouth on her. The sight of it brought her to the brink, and when he pulled her closer, plunged his tongue deeper into her, she saw stars.

The lights, which scintillated in and out of power, danced at the edge of her vision, quivering as she herself thrashed on the table, feeling an explosion above her, beneath her, inside of her. Jughead didn’t let up, didn’t relent even when she had crested. He knew that her body was capable of more, and as he teased another orgasm out of her, she rose right off the table, her body forming a taut, beautiful arch with Jughead sucking the last of her honey from between her legs.

Finally, Betty lay spent on the table. Small spasms of pleasure racked her body even in the aftermath of her orgasm. As she came to, she realised that Jughead had somehow already stripped down to his boxers, and was now dragging a chair to the middle of the room. She could only imagine how she looked then, with her hair dishevelled, her thighs sticky with cum, and her bra dragged messily halfway down her torso.

But it appeared that Jughead liked her just that way, as he draped himself over the chair before beckoning her over. “Get on me, Betts. Now.”

It was literally impossible to look sexy and dignified as she crossed the floor and stood before him, utterly sated but still hungry and depraved for him. She got on her knees, removing his boxers before getting up, straddling him and sliding down onto his turgid cock.

Jughead released a huff of breath as she involuntarily clenched her walls around him. One hand gripped at the back of her neck, the other onto her ass, keeping her steady above him. She leaned her forehead against his as they rolled their hips together in a new rhythm. Betty slid up and down on his dick, crying out as her pussy - still sensitive from the lashings of his tongue - tingled with the remnants of her climax.

He tilted up her chin so that she could meet his gaze. “You drive me so fucking wild just hearing your voice, you know that?”

Betty could only nod, her eyes glazed over in pleasure.

“I love that I can hear you down here,” he said, “how much you want this. How badly your body needs it.”

“And,” she said, “what about _you_?”

His lip curled in a smirk. “What _about_ me?”

“I wanna hear you, too” she said breathily. “Tell me what you’re doing to me, Jug. Every detail."

At that, he grabbed her hips. pushed her deeper onto his cock. “You’re wet. So wet. I made you come real hard earlier, didn’t I?”

“Uh-huh. Yeah.”

“I fucked you with my tongue and you fell apart beneath me.”

“You… you did. Yes.”

“And pumping in and out of you right now-“ he groaned. “It’s fucking exquisite.”

“Tell me more. What do you want, Jug?"

His breathing was becoming shallow now, his thrusts more frantic and steady.

“Jug? I wanna hear--"

“I want _you_ , Betty Cooper." His voice dropped to a low growl, as if he was struggling to hold it all in – the deluge he kept at bay, the pleasure his body so desired. "All of you. Your sex, your soul, your sanity. I want to make you come so hard that you forget where you are, and all that’s real and all that’s tangible to you is what’s here- “ He reached between them and thumbed her clit, and she fell into a near-swoon. “And the way your body feels as it shudders— “ _Thrust._ “And drips—“ _Thrust._ “Right around my… my—“

But he threw his head back just as she dug her fingers into his shoulders, and with a shout, with a cry, with fire and thunder coursing through their bones, they came together. The chair beneath them creaked as they rocked against each other, but they barely heard it, barely registered the possibility of a fall.

But it didn’t matter. Because they were falling even _now_ , into each other, into blissful, sublime oblivion.

The lights above them gave a final, hopeful flicker before dimming back into nothingness. They both settled into stillness, all motion subsiding, only silence and intimacy remaining.

It was a long time before either of them moved. They sat in the dark, their limbs wrapped around each other, safe in the other’s embrace.

...

In the echoing silence of the bunker, the rain was loud. 

But it was a refuge still, and it sheltered them from the outside.

After the fourth day of leaking and numerous soaked towels, Betty decided that she’d had enough. She marched over to the corner of the bunker and fixed the leak herself. If Jughead recognised that she’d used her father’s toolbox to do so, he didn’t say anything.

Some days, healing was easy.

It was infinitely easier when _he_ was with her.

She looked over at him as he perused the map on the table. There were other items there, too - a thermos of coffee, a Biology textbook, a brochure for Amherst College that he’d quietly picked up from the Guidance Counsellor, after she encouraged him to.

Things weren’t back to normal yet, but this was probably the closest they could get,

Betty sat on the bed, curling up under a blanket she’d brought from home. Jughead sighed as the light went out again, and the patter of rain could be heard above them.

“The roads are gonna be too wet, Betty,” he said. “It’ll be a while before I can take you home.”

She worried, but only a tiny bit. Her mom would be mad, of course - she’d been disappearing more than usual.

But she looked into Jughead’s eyes, and then at the space around them. Maybe  _this_ was home. Maybe she could...

“It’s okay, Jug,” she said. “I can stay for now.”

He smiled at her before returning to his book.

The patter on the roof turned stronger. Instinctively, Betty turned to her handiwork. It held together.

She closed her eyes and lay down. 

She was learning to love the rain.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic, "and in heaven below", is an allusion or continuation of another fic I had written, "In here, too", which also tackles the symbolism of the places where Jughead and Betty choose to be intimate. 
> 
> The fic basically started from the thought: is it weird that these two crazy kids have sex in Dilton's bunker, of all places? The immediate answer is yes. This, after all, is a crime scene. And... well, it's a bunker. 
> 
> But that's just it. What is a bunker other than a place in which we acknowledge our fears and the bad things happening around us... and choose to be SAFE from them? Isn't that classic Bughead?
> 
> A word about the lights: without meaning to, the motif of dark and light kind of just happened here, and it's reversed in a way - the darkness of the bunker is safety to them. It also gave way to one of the more interesting lighting situations I've worked with in a written sex scene, so that was FUN.
> 
> Also, my choice of Amherst for Jughead's college is rooted in my research for "The Christmas Letters" (it's a few hours from Columbia, you see, where Betty will go!). 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. This was my return into the Riverdale fold after a difficult S2 and a reluctant, then enthusiastic, re-loving of S3. These characters have come back to life for me, and I couldn't be more grateful.


End file.
